An Australian newspaper condemned the depiction of women in comic books. They cited one of the earliest examples of poor treatment being Spider-Man's girlfriend Gwen Stacy. So far, correct. Then they wrote about her terrible demise by being killed and stuffed in Spider-Man's fridge...

The media brouhaha surrounding the fact that in-real-life beleaguered Prime Minister Gordon Brown appeared in the Marvel ComicCaptain Britain and MI:13 had several papers calling him SuperGordon and/or saying he "leads a counterattack" on the invading Skrulls, making him sound like Prime Minister Action. In the comic itself, he shows competence and resolve, but doesn't do much; he does give commands, but seems to be a little bit out of the loop when it comes to the world of magic and superheroics.

Special Fail in the Daily Mail article linked to above: they refer to "an unseen character called Alistaire" yet the pictures they include alongside the article clearly depict the character in question!

Anytime Marvel or DC introduce a new property or Legacy Character with the aim of being socially progressive, expect the media to mess up the details while covering it.

After her debut, a number of news sources erroneously claimed that Batwoman was the first openly-gay superhero, despite there having been LGBT superheroes dating back to at least the 1980s.

Almost any gay superhero is declared "the first", including Northstar, Apollo and/or Midnighter, and on and on.

In an article about a local black comic book artist/writer, a paper claimed that there were only five black superheroes, which the article proceeded to list. Aside from the fact that there are far more than five black superheroes, the list didn't mention Storm (who, due to the at-the-time fairly recent first X-Men movie, was arguably the best-known black superhero in America) but did include Iron Fist. Who is white.

After an article by USA Today about the new Ultimate Spider-Man had the quote “Maybe sooner or later a black or gay — or both — hero will be considered something absolutely normal.”, several news organizations such as the Daily Mail and the Drudge Report automatically assumed that Miles Morales "could be gay".

Also a lot of news outlets neglected to mention that Ultimate Spider-Man is an Alternate Universe character, which led a lot of laymen think that Marvel was replacing "classic"/616 Spider-Man, Peter Parker, not his Ultimate Marvel counterpart.

After Marvel announced that they were introducing a Pakistani-American teenager as the new Ms Marvel, a number of outlets cited her as the first Muslim superhero. This is despite the fact that, at Marvel alone, Ms. Marvel is predated by Dust, Josiah X, and Faiza Hussain, and made even more ridiculous by the fact that DC got mainstream coverage only a year prior for introducing a Muslim Green Lantern.

The media's habit of referring to the new Ms. Marvel as a "reboot" of the original also led some people to believe Kamala was a Younger and HipperRace Lift of Carol Danvers, the original Ms. Marvel.

And when Sam Wilson was revealed to become the new Captain America, the Italian newssite TGCom 24 thought that they were referring to the movies rather than the comics.

Several online news outlets failed to mention that Sam Wilson was a longtime associate of Captain America and natural successor to the title, and in some cases neglected to mention that he had a prior heroic alter-ego at all. This created the assumption that either Steve Rogers was getting a Race Lift or that the editors were shoe-horning in an unheard-of black guy solely for PC purposes.

When Silk first launched, MSNBC ran a report that cited the character as Marvel's first Asian-American superhero. Keith Chow corrected them by pointing out that characters like Kamala Khan predated Silk, and that DC's Cassandra Cain was technically the first Asian-American superhero to have her own series.

On an interview on the Larry King Show, legendary Marvel Comics writer Stan Lee was discussing the merits of comics. He said that, besides great art, a lot of them have good dialogue. King scoffed "Good dialogue? What, like 'Zap!' 'Pow!' That's good dialogue?" Stan corrected him that those were sound effects. Lee was nice about it and playfully calling him a "Silly person"... There was a whole lot of old in the room.

An article about upcoming summer movies in Time magazine talked of Green Lantern and his magic ring. In fairness, there is a Green Lantern with a magic ring, just not the one the movie was about. Also, Clark's Third Law—the Guardians are little men in long robes who point their fingers at things and make stuff happen, and they give rings that let special mortals do the same.

And actually you can include any mainstream news pieces which focused on the deaths of beloved superhero staples like Superman back in the 90s, and Captain America and Batman in the 00's. They rarely mentioned that superhero deaths are a cyclical process and that their resurrections were inevitable the moment they were killed off (or, in the case of Batman, not pointing out that he was shown to actually not be dead at the end of the very story where he was presumed to have been killed). These news pieces were usually substantiated by the publicity and hype machine departments of Marvel/DC who also avoided downplaying the overall significance of those deaths lest they damper the sudden interest they were receiving.

An issue of Latina had immigrant workers (showing that they were true heroes, performing thankless tasks) dressed in various costumes. Two were dressed as the Fantastic Four, according to the caption. They were really dressed as the Wonder Twins.

Somehow, a lot of news sources reported that Fish Police was British in origin when the cartoon adaptation came out. Creator Steve Moncuse is very much American; he grew up in Harrisburg and published the first few issues out of his own house in California. He still lives in California to this day, but in a different house.

The Judge Dredd story Closet got a lot of attention from the British tabloids. Most of them did not do the research, believing it to be a story about Dredd being gay (in reality, he's a Celibate Hero), as opposed to what homosexuality in the 22nd century means for ordinary citizens of Mega City One.

A 1968 California newspaper article featured Jack Kirby in an article about the complaints concerning the motorcycle noise in a canyon very close to his home at the time. This canyon was a popular place for young bikers to congregate. The article featured a picture of Kirby standing in front of the valley. But the article had the caption "Even Superman can't get rid of them." This indicates that the reporters at least knew that Jack Kirby was a comic book artist. They just didn't bother to inquire as to what characters he created or worked on. Kirby's wife, Roz, took it in stride, explaining, in an interview, that "they called him Superman because they call all the heroes Superman when they talk about comics." Kirby didn't work on any Superman family titles until he took over "Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen" in 1970.

A review of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic #3 is full of errors. This is because the “review” is actually just a thinly-veiled rant against bronies and the author obviously didn’t even read the comic, only speaking about it in extremely vague terms and even making up lame excuses for why he “won’t go into particulars about the plot in issue three.” Of course, the fact that he only “reviewed” issue 3 is already the first hint. He obviously thought that it was a stand-alone story rather than part of a four-issue story arc. This is further confirmed by his claim that “each issue is indistinguishable from the last. Suffice it to say that in the end, everyone learns a valuable moral lesson about how friendship is indeed magic, and goes home happy.” The ponies don’t go home at all, happy or otherwise, until issue 4 — which wasn’t out yet when the review was written — and issue 2 ends with the ponies falling out with each other, so not a single word of that statement is true. He also calls it a “simple, colorful, harmless story”, which means he didn’t even bother to take a look at the preview images on iTunes.

The Castle episode "Heroes & Villains" has a wall of heroes, including Deadpool and Black Panther, and says they're all motivated by the murder of a parent. Except Deadpool is an insane mercenary with severe cancer who's kept alive by an implanted healing factor who isn't at all motivated by a parent's murder, and Black Panther, while he became the Panther because of his father's death, it's because the Black Panther is a hereditary title taken by the ruler and guardian of the fictional African country Wakanda, and T'Challa, the current Black Panter, received it as a result of the death of his father T'Chacka.

Though it's averted with the Black Panther. Although his title is hereditary, his motivation to become a superhero, as detailed in his origin story in Fantastic Four #53, was to avenge the murder of his father, who was killed at the hands of Ulysses Klaw.

Microsoft posted this photo of Spider-Man in his black suit posing in front of an Xbox One poster at Comic-Con. The message accompanying the photo?

Many news outlits were screaming "Archie Comics killed Archie Andrews off!" and this ticked off many people who don't even read the comics. What these people failed to discuss properly was they killed off the Life with Archie: The Married Life character, not the main continuity teenager. Life With Archie was a spinoff series meant to allow the children to finally become adults and live their lives. The proper timeline Archie is perfectly fine and alive, and Archie isn't canceling the series. In fact Archie is more popular than it's been in years and Archie even rebooted it.

Rush Limbaugh stated the villain Bane in The Dark Knight Rises was an obvious reference to Bain Capital (and thus an attack on 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney) and then made some other claims, but news outlets were quick to point out Bane was from The '90s, before Bain Capital had existed.

Usagi Yojimbo is often taken to be the main character's name, including at least one crossover with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His name's actually Miyamoto Usagi, "Yojimbo" (bodyguard) is his job.

The controversial Batgirl cover (The one where Batgirl is shown crying) rised some heated discussion, and at least one forum claimed that male superheroes were never shown weak or unable to act due to trauma. When Scarecrow's fear gas was brought up, they quickly claimed that it doesn't count because it's "not real fear, only chemicals". His fear gas creates realistic hallucinations of the victim's fears to terrify them, it doesn't just make them scared without a reason. By that logic, PTSD shouldn't exist, since any possible hallucinations are not real.

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